Reply to Which traditional privates take very high functioning Kids with autism

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Which traditional privates take very high functioning Kids with autism"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Fear of stigma is far worse than actual stigma because it keeps parents from giving their children what they need. This is not directed at OP, who didn't raise the issue of stigma. But I have seen parents make terrible mistakes because of some overblown fear that sending their child to a school that can actually support their needs will somehow harm them. 
[/quote]

12:29, without questioning that this might be your experience ours was very different.  We opted in favor of the additional services in an SN setting trusting that when the time came to make a switch our child's positive attributes and strong capabilities would be appreciated and our decision to get some extra early help understood in context.  But we had one hell of a time getting accepted at a mainstream school afterward despite strong test scores across the board.  Friends of ours who redacted info about SN background did much better even in instances where their children had significantly more serious challenges. Fortunately after beating our heads against the wall for a while we found a school that was not so closed-minded.  Our child immediately did great, as we knew they would -- performing at the top of the class academically and being popular socially.  There is absolutely no doubt in our mind that our child would also have performed well at several of the other schools we looked at if they had not been blinded by the SN background.

[b]Bottom line is that we pooh-poohed the concern about stigma for a long time and almost undercut our child's future opportunities as a result.
[/b]
Even beyond this we learned that when we didn't provide background info to teachers (for example extracurricular), expectations were kept high and our child did very well in their classes.  We only ran into problems when our child's background followed them around.

[b]And frankly we got some bad advice about this from professionals; professionals have a particular take on things because they work with these kids and assume that because they don't stigmatize such kids that others won't.  Our experience shows that to be incorrect.
[/b]
I'm not suggesting that people should deny their kids needed support.  We didn't deny that to our child and I wouldn't recommend anyone else doing so. But the idea that there is no stigma out there is, we have found, naive and wrong.  There's a ton of it. Admissions people may say there isn't, but they are human, and there is.

[/quote]

YES!  We completely agree.  It was well-known at our private that if your DC had ADHD NOT to mention to anyone because then there would be gossip, your child would be earmarked, and teachers would use the diagnosis as a reason to "give up".  I saw it happen over and over and over.  And the gossip mill just made it worse.  As a resutl, we didn't tell the school that DC had ADHD until I caught the teachers being abusive on Parent Observation Day.  Then I called a meeting and disclosed that DC might have ADHD.  Dumb dumb dumb.  The school didn't do anything for DC and the situation just became worse so we and our money left.  Those other parents who had ADHD diagnoses and kids were even on meds. learned from these experiences and never disclosed to the private school.  I wish that weren't the case, but in some schools it's just the excuse that lazy teachers or teachers who don't want to learn how to differentiate need to ignore your child.

YES also to all the "professionals" in the ADHD field who argue incessantly that your child MUST be told their diagnosis.  Why?  So they can then sign your kid up for therapy, psychotherapy, blood work (some nut who was really into PANDAS - wrong), social groups, brain exercises, nutrition experts and now "mindfulness training".  Every single professional we saw argued that DC, who was young at that point, be told.  I knew my DC and knew s/he had anxiety issues and would do better if not "told".  And we were right.  DC's ego was very fragile.  We knew that a diagnosis of something "being wrong" would lead to DC giving up.  So we didn't tell DC.  And, guess what?  Further testing showed no signs of ADHD.  I.Q. in the Mensa range.  No ADHD.  So be careful about having professionals being too anxious to label your child.  I completely agree with PP.  (also it varies from child to child but in our case not labeling was the correct move)[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics